I’m having trouble falling asleep.
Will they believe me if I tell them the whole story? Or will they think I’m one proton short of a full atom and put me in a place with white walls where they feed you Jell-O and take away your shoelaces? Or maybe they’ll call the police, who will come and lead me away in handcuffs.
Even though it wasn’t part of my and Abbie’s original plan, I wanted to tell Jim and Diane everything as soon as Zach and I walked in the door. Just lay it all out. True Confessions of a Time Snatcher. And I could tell from Jim’s face that he had plenty of questions to ask me and not just for the sake of pleasant conversation, either. But after a little huddle with Zach and Diane in the kitchen, they came back out.
“Tell us all about it in the morning, Caleb,” Diane had said. “We could all use some sleep.”
So here I am, waiting for the morning to come. And believe me, I’ve seen whole centuries pass a lot quicker than this.
I snuggle deeper into the bed. Maybe if I tell them, it’ll be all right. Why shouldn’t they believe me? After all, in a couple of years they’re going to put a man on the moon. Surely, the idea of someone traveling through time shouldn’t be that tough to swallow. But if I told them the whole story, the real true whole story, would they ever believe that Zach is safe?
An itch near my wrist triggers a whole bunch of new thoughts. One of which is: without time travel, the only way I’m ever going to leave 1967 is the same way as everyone else—by growing older.
I reach across to the bedside table, turn on the lamp and take my driftwood carving into my hands, running my fingers along its surface. For a long time I didn’t know whose face I was carving. But now I know.
It’s my face. The face of my new beginning.
I run my fingers over it; first the chin, next the cheekbones, then the nose. I stop at the eyes. They’re still there. Exactly where I placed them. One in each eye socket. I pluck them out and hold them in my hand. Two small silver pills. Nassim’s words come back to me: “Take two of these and, within a couple of minutes, you won’t remember anything that happened before dinner last night.”
I glance at the clock on the table. 4:03 A.M. There’s really no reason to put this off any longer. Abbie is safe.
I gaze at the pills in my hand. They’re so small. It’s hard to believe that something that tiny can have such a devastating effect.
“You’ll need to take both of them,” Abbie had said. “One isn’t going to be enough. And don’t wait for me to take them.”
She had made me promise. And so far I’ve really only broken one part: the bit about not waiting. But since I’m on a roll maybe I should break the rest of my promise and not take the pills at all.
“I don’t want to forget you,” I had told her.
“You won’t have to. I’m coming with you, remember?”
“No, I mean once I take them you’ll be a complete stranger to me. We won’t know each other.”
“We won’t be strangers for long. We’ll get to know each other just like new friends do. Besides, if something goes really wrong … I’ll get the antidote.”
I place one of the pills on my tongue.
“You have a chance that most people never get, Cale,” she had said.
Abbie’s right. I have a chance to do what I’ve always dreamed of. To start over. To live a normal life, with a real family. This is exactly what I want.
I close my mouth and swallow.
I don’t feel a thing.
Then I pop the other one in my mouth. Down the hatch with that one too.
I’m starting to feel sleepy. One pleasant thought should do it. Well, how’s this one, then:
Zach is safe.
July 29, 1967, 11:49 A.M.
Boston, Massachusetts
It’s not even noon, and already it’s been a full day. I spent most of the morning at the Child Welfare Office. The people there were nice enough, but it was clear that they had no idea what to do with a kid who had no ID and didn’t know his own last name. As soon as Diane mentioned that she thought I might be Canadian on account of the fact that once she heard me say “ay” instead of “huh,” the Child Welfare people were all over it, which meant I got to spend two hours in a waiting room playing Etch A Sketch while they called around to a dozen different Canadian Government offices to see if there had been any recent reports of runaways.
After Child Welfare, Diane took me to the police station to meet with the policeman assigned to Zach’s case, Detective Portelli, a roly-poly kind of guy with a crew cut. At first, he did all the talking, confiding that he was trying to lose weight but couldn’t stand eating the carrot sticks his wife packed in his lunch, so he’d sneak out to Hamburger Haven for a burger and fries, which in his opinion was still a diet lunch on account of the fact that he said hold the ketchup. But when it came to my turn to talk and I couldn’t tell him a single thing about what had happened to Zach or even what I was doing with him at the park late at night, he frowned and reached for his desk drawer, where he kept his stash of Oreos.
Now I’m at the doctor’s office, sitting on a bed in the examining room, waiting for the doctor to barge through the door. This is my fourth medical visit this week. All of these doctors must use the same interior designer because the décor hasn’t changed from one examining room to the next: narrow bed, scale, eye chart and a poster of the inside of an ear. By now I’m an expert on cochlear fluid and earwax. I’ve also memorized the tiny letters on the bottom line of the eye chart—which, when I think about it, won’t do me any good. I mean, what’s the point of cheating on your own eye exam?
I cross my legs, and the paper underneath me crunches. It’s hard to get comfortable wearing nothing but underwear, white socks and a sky blue hospital gown that no matter how much I tug doesn’t come down far enough.
A short, middle-aged man strides in flanked by two young men and a woman. Everyone except me is wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard. His name tag says DR. WINTON, and the tagalongs I figure to be his medical students. The doctor’s stethoscope swings as he turns toward me. Which is another thing that I don’t get. Even though I have absolutely no recollection of a big chunk of my life, somehow I still know a bunch of stuff, like what a stethoscope is.
“Good morning, Caleb. How are we today?” he asks. When he says this, a vein in his neck does the tango, and for a moment, I feel the edge of a memory poking through. But when I try to grab it, I can’t.
“Good morning, doctor. I’m fine,” I say, which, except for the empty parking lot in my brain, is the truth.
“Are we getting any of our memories back yet?” he asks. That we is starting to grate on me. Almost as irritating is the fact that the medical students are eyeing me like a piece of gum they just discovered under their shoes.
“I get flashes of parts of things,” I say, “but they don’t make any sense.”
Dr. Winton smiles. The medical students follow suit. I get the feeling they want me to keep talking, so I do.
“They’re all jumbled together,” I say. “Snapping turtles and a pie tin spinning through the air and a cave and a yellow kimono.”
The students are jotting notes like crazy. I’m tempted to say rhinoceros droppings and see if they write that down too.
Dr. Winton leans in and shines a light in my eyes. I smell onions on his breath. The students edge closer, taking up positions on either side of me.
“Look to the left,” he says, and I comply dutifully.
“Look to the right,” he continues. “And now, straight ahead.”
I do as I’m told.
The doctor pauses for a moment and turns to face the students. “The patient is suffering from profound amnesia. Etiology?”
“Physical trauma to the brain?” asks the female student.
“His X-rays aren’t consistent with trauma,” answers Dr. Winton.
“Ingestion of a toxin?” volunteers one of the guys.
“Not indicated.”
I’m not sure what bothers me more: the fact that I can’t understand a word they’re saying or that they’re talking about me as if I’m not even in the room.
“Doctor,” I say, “have you ever seen any cases like mine before?”
He smiles. “Not every day. But yes, I’ve seen a couple of cases like yours over the years. The brain is a complicated organ. We still don’t understand it completely. Sometimes it does things to protect itself.”
“Do you think that’s what my brain is doing?” I ask.
“Perhaps,” says Dr. Winton, and out of the corner of my eye I can see the students scribbling “perhaps” on their clipboards.
“I’m going to order some tests for you, Caleb,” he says, and I groan. More tests. “And in the meantime, I’m going to give you something.”
He pulls open the desk drawer and hands me a pen and a spiral notebook. I open the book and flip through the lined pages. They’re completely blank.
“This is your memory book,” he says. “I want you to bring it with you wherever you go. When you remember something, jot it down. Don’t worry about it making any sense. Just write it down as it comes to you.”
I nod. I like the feel of the notebook. My own book, for my own memories.
“And when you’re back next week,” he continues, “we’ll talk about what you’ve written down. All right?”
“All right,” I say.
The doctor smiles and then exits the room, the students trailing him.
As I get dressed, an image flashes in my head. Boy, that was quick!
I whip open the book and scrawl July 29, 1967 at the top of the first page. And before the image fades away entirely I scribble, girl dressed like warrior.
It makes no sense at all. But for some reason it feels good writing it down. Maybe one day all the memory fragments will come together like the pieces of some giant puzzle.
I close the book and finish dressing. Jim, Diane and Zach are all there in the waiting room when I get out.
Zach leaps up from his seat, and grabs my hand. “Caylid. Mom said when you’re done your ’pointment we’re going on a picnic, and you’re done, so let’s go!”
I let myself be dragged along. Zach doesn’t let go until we’re outside in the sunlight. It’s so bright I have to squint. It feels good to be breathing in fresh air.
“C’mon. Let’s race there!” shouts Zach.
The next second, Zach takes off, sprinting along a footpath.
As I run to catch up, I can hear Jim’s footsteps right behind me. Ever since I showed up at their doorstep that night, Jim has made sure that I haven’t been left alone with Zach for even a minute. I think there’s still a part of him that suspects I had something to do with Zach’s kidnapping. But it doesn’t make me angry. If I was in his shoes, I’d be suspicious, too. In fact, even without being in his shoes, I’m suspicious—that is, sometimes I wonder if my brain purposely blocked out my memories because I’ve done something horrible.
We follow Zach over a pedestrian bridge that crosses high above a bunch of lanes of traffic. It’s obvious he knows where he’s going.
We come bounding off the bridge onto a grassy area with a bunch of picnic tables and a concession stand. But Zach doesn’t stop there. Jim and I chase after him along another path until he finally comes to a stop in the middle of a small footbridge crossing a pond.
“Look. Ducks!” he cries.
Much quacking follows from both the duck and us. Zach starts waddling, which is a good thing because waddling is slower than running, and by now I’m tuckered out.
As soon as we step off the bridge, Zach announces, “We made it. This is the ’splanade, Caylid. You can walk forever, but we’re not gonna. Look, there’s the river!”
I glance through the trees and sure enough I can see the blue gray water of the Charles River only a stone’s throw away. But it’s only a quick look because Zach’s tugging at me again.
“C’mon, there’s a better view from up there,” he says, pointing to a grassy knoll.
We race up the small hill, and as soon as we get to the top, we flop down on the grass. When I look up, I’m surprised to see that Jim hasn’t raced up with us. He’s still at the bottom of the hill, waiting for Diane.
Zach plucks a tiny flower from the ground and holds it under my chin.
“Caylid, you like butter!” says Zach.
He hands me the flower and guides my hand so I’m holding it just under his chin.
“Now do me!” he says.
I scrunch my eyebrows and study the color of Zach’s chin. It’s hard to tell from my angle, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.
“You too,” I say. “You are definitely a big butter lover. In fact, I’d say you’d like butter on everything. Even your Cheerios!”
That sends him into gales of laughter. I open my hand and let the wind take the flower. I watch it as the breeze blows it down the hill and clear of the walking path. Another gust comes along, and for a moment, it looks like the small flower will be home free. But the next second, it gets lodged in between some rocks.
Jim and Diane arrive, and she lays out a big blanket for us to all sit on.
The last two weeks have been a whirlwind—appointments with doctors, Child Welfare people and the police. Hours spent in Jim’s old station wagon driving around Boston. All of this to help me try to remember who I am. Where I’m from. How I found Zach. But so far everything’s come up a big fat zero.
It’s not just me who everyone’s interested in. The doctors and police are also talking to Zach and asking him lots of questions. But when it comes to me, his answer is always the same: that I saved him from the bad place and the bad man. It’s a lucky thing for me that Jim and Diane have stuck by my side through everything. Not knowing the whole story has been hard for them, especially Jim, but as Diane said to me after my first visit to the police station, “Zach believes in you, Caleb, and that’s good enough for us.”
Diane hands out paper cups and pours lemonade for everyone from a big thermos.
“Zach, give this one to Caleb, please.”
He does, but not without spilling a bit on my thumb. I lick it up, which starts Zach laughing again.
I gaze out at the Charles River and see a sleek-looking rowboat with eight rowers aboard. The boat is moving at a good clip. It amazes me how well the rowers work as a team, dipping their oars in the river, pulling them through the water and then taking them out, all at exactly the same time.
“Caleb,” begins Jim, “Diane and I have been thinking that maybe, if you agree … we’ll take a break from things. You know, and just enjoy all of us being together. I mean, not worry so much about who you are or that you’re not where you’re supposed to be.”
“But, Daddy, we know who Caylid is. He’s Caylid. And he’s just where he’s s’posed to be,” chimes Zach, “with us!”
I smile at Zach and catch Jim’s eye. He doesn’t say anything. Just nods at the wisdom of his five-year-old son. I nod too and close my eyes. For the first time in two weeks, I feel light. As if a great weight has been lifted from me.
After a moment, I open my eyes and look out over the river. The boat is nowhere in sight.
CREDITS
page 37 Excerpt from “Dream-Land,” Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Poems, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, editor, University of Illinois Press, 2000.
page 42 Excerpt from “Spirits of the Dead,” Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Poems, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, editor, University of Illinois Press, 2000.
page 79 “Restless Night,” Tu Fu, from The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, translated and edited by Burton Watson, copyright © 1984, Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
page 146 “House Hidden in the Bamboo Grove,” in Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei, by Wang Wei, tr. Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Xu Haixin, © University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH. Reprinted with permission.
page
163 Analects of Confucius, Book 15, Chapter 11.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere thanks go to Peter Carver and everyone in his George Brown College writing critique group in Toronto over the years for encouragement and support; the staff at the embassies of Mongolia in Canada and the United States for help with certain Mongolian words and phrases; Jennifer Mook-Sang, Alvin Yang and Terry Huang for help with Mandarin words and phrases; Maya Ungar and Marg Gilks for encouragement; my agents Josh Adams and Quinlan Lee for taking a chance on me and finding a great home for my manuscript; John Rudolph for believing in my writing and, along with Shauna Fay, for tackling the first round of edits; Ana Deboo, Rob Farren, and Cindy Howle for their excellent copyediting; my editor Susan Kochan for inspiring me to produce the best book possible; and my family Dayna, Rafi and Simon for continued love and support.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Time Snatchers is a work of fiction, but there is a historical basis for many of the events mentioned in this book (e.g., the developing of the first photograph, the invention of the Frisbee). I have been as accurate as possible with information about events and historical figures, though some details have been imagined to suit the storytelling.
Time Snatchers Page 28
